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Comment by bigiain | Hacker News Reader

> it's important to acknowledge that the "works on the first try" for typical Old Space projects came at absolutely enormous expense

And, I suspect (as your footnote mentions), they took risks that would not be considered/permitted today.

Modern "Human rated" space flights are very very different to the Gemini and Sputnik days.

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Lets just be real, putting people on the first Shuttle flight was borderline insane.

I’d argue given the two failed flights that putting people on the shuttle at all was borderline insane.

There were 135 flights. 2 failed. Let’s leave it at that.

2 failed, but part of why the Shuttle was grounded as soon as its ISS construction flights were done, despite there being no other way for America to independently take people to space was that it was found to be a death trap, with it being a miracle that more losses hadn't occurred.

Yes, however, one of those failures was due to a flaw that remained basically unsolved for the entirety of the shuttle program. That puts things in a different light, no?

Yeah, Crippen and Young were the bravest/most insane astronauts I can think of, especially with the lack of viable abort options on that vehicle.

For more insanity, it was initially suggested to be a return to launch site (RTLS) abort test. The mission commander shut that down in a hurry. I've always thought it was interesting that Buran could fly autonomously while the Shuttle couldn't.

Actually if you looked at it the shuttle system was pretty insane all around

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